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The Absolutist by John Boyne: Review

A First World War veteran spills his secrets in this novel by Irish writer John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.) As Tristan Sadler travels from London to Norwich to return his dead friend’s letters to the sister who wrote them, he appears tense, although his task seems straightforward enough.

John Boyne's The Absolutist, Random House, 309 pages, $24.95.

By Nancy Wigston

Fri., Aug. 10, 2012

A First World War veteran spills his secrets in this novel by Irish writer John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.) As Tristan Sadler travels from London to Norwich to return his dead friend’s letters to the sister who wrote them, he appears tense, although his task seems straightforward enough.

Yet from the start, things are off-kilter. On the train “the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders she had committed over the years.” Turns out she’s a famous mystery writer, and Tristan commits a faux pas by suggesting she switch publishers to the firm where he’s employed. “I had disgraced myself,” he realizes, as the lady’s expression turns to ice.

Disgrace, we discover, has been central to Tristan’s young life. Boyne’s calm, measured prose erupts from time to time in bursts of unexpected shock, like exploding shells. Tristan cannot check into his hotel after an incident the previous night involving a man, a boy, and the police.

While his room is being “thoroughly cleaned,” Tristan goes to a nearby pub, where the narrative switches to the present. We realize we are reading the recollections of an elderly writer, seeing in his mind’s eye his younger self, his writing career beginning in “the clamour of the crowded public house. . . infinitely more welcoming than the stillness of the empty house.”

After a sympathetic man his father’s age offers to guess from his accent which part of London he’s from—a successful party trick—Tristan relaxes a bit. The man confides that he lost both his sons in the war, and when he offers to tell Tristan what he’s feeling, he warily accepts.

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“Guilt,” announces the stranger, adding, almost casually, “You hate yourself.” After delivering these psychic blows, he departs, wishing Tristan an enjoyable holiday, “or whatever it is you’re here for.” Women whose faces turn to ice, men who see his secret guilt and shame—either post-war England is a weird and treacherous place, or Tristan is far from recovered from the trenches.

A shattered glass makes him jump; a finger undergoes spasms he can’t control. Of the 20 men he trained with at Aldershot, only two survived—the other is mad. His lover and friend, Will Bancroft, was shot in France for “absolutism,” a refusal to serve—even as a stretcher bearer—after witnessing a war crime.

The issue of “feather men”—perceived cowards presented with white feathers by strangers—forms a major motif in Tristan’s wartime memories. One man requested and received conscientious objector status; he was found dead the next day. Although Will reacts strongly, Tristan doggedly gets on with it. A butcher’s son whose father has banished him, he has no time for philosophy.

In Norwich, the meeting with Will’s sister Marian—a vivid, outspoken character—goes very awkwardly. Tristan is further shocked when she reveals that her brother spoke warmly about their friendship, but later wrote to tell her that Tristan had been killed.

A polished storyteller, Boyne takes us down a trail we think we recognize only to surprise us with a wartime tragedy about class, anger, and revenge. Sex between men was illegal, but love between a butcher’s boy and a vicar’s son? Unthinkable. Will never guesses what’s coming, and neither do we.

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